Lumifer comments on Why Are Individual IQ Differences OK? - Less Wrong

39 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 26 October 2007 09:50PM

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Comment author: Lumifer 20 August 2013 04:24:05AM *  6 points [-]

So the horrible European experience of being a Chinese colony has shocked the Caucasian population into scoring noticeably lower on the IQ tests than the Chinese?

Comment author: CellBioGuy 20 August 2013 04:27:48AM 1 point [-]

I was referring to:

In Africa? It so happens that the world is much bigger than the USA and the people in sub-Saharan Africa test for IQ pretty much the same as African-Americans.

It is far from hard to see how sub-saharan africa has been stripped and degraded over the centuries in a way that, say, rural China wasn't.

And I am far from convinced that IQ, being an extremely culturally contextual measure, can be disentangled from modes of thought that lend themselves to abstract pattern analysis being more or less common in different traditions.

Comment author: Lumifer 20 August 2013 04:49:13AM *  5 points [-]

It is far from hard to see how sub-saharan africa has been stripped and degraded over the centuries in a way that, say, rural China wasn't.

Centuries..? Central Africa was explored by Europeans (that is, the first Europeans appeared there) in the mid-XIX century. Most of the African countries were independent by late 60s early 70s of the XX century. Notable chunks like Ethiopia were never colonized (Ethiopia was occupied by Italy for a short time in 1930s and early 40s).

But anyway, it is hard for me to see. Can you provide data?

IQ, being an extremely culturally contextual measure

So your thesis is that the Chinese culture is very suited to "abstract pattern analysis", the European culture is moderately suited and the Black culture... oh wait there is no single unified Black culture, so the Black population is unique in that its culture doesn't matter but it was so similarly oppressed in Africa and the US that they ended up with similar reduced IQ. But the Ashkenazi Jews, though they were oppressed in Europe, ended up with a higher-than-Caucasian IQ.

Um...